On remittance 3 — outflow data

The last post on remittance discussed an unofficial freeze by Saudi Arabia on Bangladeshi workers. This unofficial freeze would be evident in the number of workers travelling to Saudi Arabia. I don’t have that data. The data on total outflow of workers are, however, available from the CEIC Asia database.

They show that nearly a million workers had left Bangladesh in 2008/09. In 2009/10, this number had come down to around 425,000 people. But this was still a higher number than at any year before 2006-07. This is shown in the chart below.

Since December 2008, about 35,000 workers have left Bangladesh a month — similar to the monthly outflow in the year before the boom (during the boom between March 2007 and November 2008, the monthly outflow averaged at 75,000).

The monthly data is available to only February 2011. Thus, the effects of the Arab uprisings are not yet visible. Plus, there is no data on inflow (that is, return of workers from overseas).

And what about the Saudi freeze? This data don’t tell us anything about that.